• Passion: a career we really want and we find meaning in it, most likely not because of money.
• Experience and knowledge
• Skill set (depending on job description):
  • Methods, tools (software, hardware) , processes, etc
  • Teamwork: collaborative, working in a team, self motivated
  • Communication skills : oral and written
  • Analytical thinking skills
  • Creative problem-solving
  • Leadership, etc
• Working hard and smart
• Personality

• No residency or work right visa
• Lack of direct relevant experience
• Skill set is not right
• Lack of confidence in phone or face to face interview
• Culturally difficult to be in sync with the team
• Missing key words in resume, because HR people may not be familiar with technical terms which imply the key areas/features of job description

• Expand and maintain network
• Improve resume
• Utilise resources
• Understand the difference between job and career
• Discover self and seek what really interest self
• Read some inspiring and life changing books, and practice (Homepage of this website)
• Think of playing chess; stand in other's shoes:
  • Do we know what we are really interested in, good at (or potentially good at)?
  • Do we know what our target industry or companies are?
    • Are we prepared to take more risk, uncertainty, challenge or entrepreneurship?
    • Or, are we looking for real certainty for work, life and family?
  • Do we know what our target industry or companies expect?
  • How can we prepare for our dream career?
  • What qualification, skillsets, experiences the dream industry need?

More reflection, experience and lessons are in the following sections.

• Each resume should be written explicitly and specifically matching each job description
• For each section, think about description of
  • Evidence to support you are the match to the job opening, such as
    • Achievements, rewards or contribution to company, community and society
      • For example, describing project duties, exceptional contribution, with evidence to support the claim, e.g. saving project $$$, customer satisfaction %%%.
    • Good academic results to show that you studied hard (potentially hard worker)
    • Leaders in university organisations to show leadership
  • Key responsibilities for job histories

• Colleagues, friends, classmates, supervisors, and professional bodies
• LinkedIn
• HR recruiters and agencies
• In Australia & New Zealand, https://www.seek.com.au/ is one of the most popular websites for employers and job seekers (both professional and academic jobs)
• For academic jobs around the world, https://academicpositions.com/, https://www.researchgate.net/jobs, https://www.academics.com/

What do you think?

Pros:

1. Focus on a few jobs, tasks,at a period of time
2. Often engineers can complete milestones and celebrate small successes along the way
3. Often project scope, budget and timeline are largely predictable (surely there are mistakes, delay and uncertainties)
4. Time slots are more likely to be well organised
5. Industry may have better pay
6. May well develop knowledge and skills in various relevant disciplines

Cons:

1. may have time sheets to fill in for every hour of work (every dollar counts for project management)
2. may have economic cycles. In mining boom, many companies urgently need new people and in mining bust, redundancies happen a lot (people lose jobs or need relocate)

QUT: Prof. Gerard Ledwich, Dr. Wendy Miller, A/Prof. Geoffrey Walker, Prof. Wageeh Boles, Prof. Jillian Hamilton, Ms Michelle Fox

FERC: Dr. Jessica Bian

Senior recruitment consultant: Anthony Balsiger (on Linkedin)

HR/Executive coacher: Alison Jardie, www.leadershipevolution.com.au